"Alexander's Ragtime Band" is a Tin Pan Alley song by American composer Irving Berlin released in 1911; it is often inaccurately cited as his first global hit.

[14] The song's popularity re-surged in 1934 with the release of a close harmony cover by the Boswell Sisters,[15] and a 1938 musical film of the same name starring Tyrone Power and Alice Faye.

[18] In March 1911, the Ted Snyder Company in New York City employed the 23-year-old Irving Berlin as a Tin Pan Alley songwriter.

[19] By this time, the ragtime phenomenon popularized by pianist Scott Joplin and other African-American musicians had begun to wane,[20] and over a decade had passed since the syncopated genre's initial heyday in the Gay Nineties.

[19] A tireless workaholic, Berlin composed the piece while in the noisy offices of Ted Snyder's music publishing firm where "five or six pianos and as many vocalists were making bedlam with songs of the day.

[28] Fortunately for Berlin, vaudeville singer and baritone Emma Carus liked his humorous composition, and she introduced the song on April 18, 1911, at the American Music Hall in Chicago.

[11] The catchy song became indelibly linked with Carus in the public consciousness, although rival performers such as Al Jolson later co-opted the hit tune.

[30] A fellow composer in attendance, George M. Cohan, instantly recognized the catchiness of the tune and told Berlin that the song would be an obvious hit.

[39] The Daily Express wrote in 1913 that: In every London restaurant, park and theater, you hear [Berlin's] strains; Paris dances to it; Vienna has forsaken the waltz; Madrid has flung away her castanets, and Venice has forgotten her barcarolles.

[40]Writers such as Edward Jablonski and Ian Whitcomb have emphasized the irony that, in the 1910s, even the upper class of the Russian Empire—a reactionary nation from which Berlin's Jewish forebears had been compelled to flee decades earlier[41]—became enamored with "the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania.

"[42] Specifically, British socialite Lady Diana Cooper described Prince Felix Yusupov, an affluent Russian aristocrat who married the niece of Tsar Nicholas II and later murdered Grigori Rasputin, as dancing "around the ballroom like a demented worm" and shouting, "More ragtime!

"[43] They declared that "whether [the ragtime mania] is simply a passing phase of our decadent culture or an infectious disease which has come to stay, like la grippe or leprosy, time alone can show.

"[44] As the years passed, Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" had many recurrent manifestations as many artists covered it: Billy Murray, in 1912;[45] Bessie Smith, in 1927;[18] Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, in 1930;[46] the Boswell Sisters, in 1934;[15] Louis Armstrong, in 1937;[18] Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell, in 1938;[18] Johnny Mercer, in 1945;[18] Al Jolson, in 1947;[18] Nellie Lutcher, in 1948, and Ray Charles in 1959.

[47] He ascribed its unexpected success to the farcical and silly lyrics which were "fundamentally right" and "started the heels and shoulders of all America and a good section of Europe to rocking.

"[47] In 1937, 20th Century Fox approached Irving Berlin to write a story treatment for an upcoming film tentatively titled Alexander's Ragtime Band.

"[50] Released on August 5, 1938, Alexander's Ragtime Band starring Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, and Don Ameche became a smash hit and grossed in excess of five million dollars.

[54] There are allegations that Berlin purloined the melody for "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (in particular, the four notes of "oh, ma honey") from drafts of "Mayflower Rag" and "A Real Slow Drag" by prolific composer Scott Joplin.

"[45]Joplin's widow claimed that, "after Scott had finished writing Treemonisha, and while he was showing it around, hoping to get it published, [Berlin] stole the theme, and made it into a popular song.

"[45] Joplin later died bankrupt after undertaking the financial burden of his unsuccessful Treemonisha opera and was buried in a pauper's grave (remaining unmarked for 57 years) in Queens, New York, on April 1, 1917.